A Fine Day for Sailing
by razbliuto
Summary: Right now the sea is endless and free, so that little is big enough. LuffyNami, 50 sentences.


**Author's Notes**: Some settings have been taken from One Piece color spreads. Oh, and possible Strong World spoilers (I haven't seen it, just looked it up online. Yay for spoilers!) Super long sentences ahead. Beware. I love LuffyNami too much to not add run-ons and weird sentence structure, gosh dang it.**  
Disclaimer**: I do not own One Piece and etc.

-**  
It's a Fine Day for Sailing  
**-**  
**

**Move—**

Sails are released against the storm amid the boom of cannonballs: in an instant of panic, Nami's heels skid against the slippery wood, halting her bellows of '_Chopper! Hard to port!_' to grab onto the railing of Merry, and glimpses a giant black mortar shell hurtling down at her through the whirlwind of rain—then there is Luffy, who jumps in its path and blasts away the cannonball with a puff of his stomach; he lands with one hand pressed on top of his hat and shouts something like '_Hey, be more careful!_' and she yells to him a hasty '_Thank you!_' and they get right back on track.

**Sleep—**

You can tell how Luffy feels when he is asleep, Nami decodes early on—most of the time Luffy's content, with loud snores rumbling from his hammock and a trail of drool sliding down his chin; occasionally Luffy is energetic, but that's only when he's unconsciously eating Sanji's food; rarely Luffy sleeps angry, with his straw hat pulled over his eyes, hands laced behind his head, and cheek pressed tight in the crook of his shoulder—Nami has seen him doze off quietly, unnoticeably, only once: on the back of Sunny in the soft shade of the mast and her mikan trees, but the way Luffy looked then is something she'll keep for herself.

**Inspire—**

"It's the idea of being strong enough," he grins at her through the bars of his cage, "to risk your life!"

**Sweat—**

Nami lines a paper, flips through mountains of stacked books around her, and scribbles in positions and currents and outlines of islands as perspiration trickles down her face and the candle melts ever lower and the moon is bright silver mirror hanging in the night—and when she jerks awake to Luffy's "_Wow, Nami! You made this?" _she allows him to hang up her map with dirty fingers this one time because—because after eight years, she is finally doing what she loves.

**Lovely—**

There is nothing more alien than the concept of beauty to Luffy, but a year or two down the road he stumbles upon a shop where his navigator is trying on a dress and something inside of him blurts out: "Hey, Nami. You should buy that."

**Breathe—**

She first dives after Luffy when Zoro got lost in the forest and Franky is held up fighting off five hulking guys at once and Sanji and Usopp are back at the ship: Nami doesn't even take off her heels before she jumps off the cliff after her stupid captain and hits the ocean moments after him; the world goes dark-cold and heavy and she can't see anything, but Nami pushes through, finds a rubberman's limp wrist, and drags them both upward as her lungs squeeze tighter and tighter—but it is still a relief when Luffy coughs out water on her shoulder, and Nami tells him he owes her eight thousand beli for her ruined skirt (she adds on only ninety percent interest, because regardless of anything, he's still her captain.)

**Rough—**

Luffy lets Sanji beat him up because whatever he did he most definitely deserved it, and plus Sanji would never make him food again; Luffy lets Zoro beat him up because whatever he did was stupid, even stupider than Zoro on an average basis, so Luffy's okay with that, too; Luffy lets Nami beat him up because Nami is Nami, and he can't think of a better reason than that.

**Strike—**

In the snap of a second, the mat bends underneath her feet as she spins from her stomp and sends her bo staff whipping through the air and cracking against the side of Luffy's skull: his face smacks the floor, muffling his shouts of pain, and the referee shouts '_White: Winner!_'—Nami just pulls off her mask and sighs at her sulking captain, who had spent the past five minutes with an irritated Zoro trying to figure out how to properly strike with a bamboo sword: "Face it, Luffy: Everyone is better than you in a weapons-only match."

**Help— **

"Because, because, this isn't, I mean, it's not like I really—_he_ doesn't, so—," she blabbers on and on to Robin, whose lips is curled in an amused smile above her book and watches Nami trail off as she looks out the window of their quarters and onto the lawn—she watches Nami's eyes grow softer and in that brief moment _understands_, so Robin closes her book with a snap: "It's a beautiful day. Shall we go outside?"

**Resist**

(Nami does not like the feeling in her stomach when she looks at him.)

**Meet—**

(Luffy sometimes wakes up with a strange feeling he's been dreaming about a town where he landed when a bird dropped him out of the sky.)

**Taut—**

She slips and runs and jumps across the pathway of rooftops until she can't even tell if the water on her face is from Aqua Laguna or the rain or her because she the only one that can do this; she screams and screams and screams the truth until her throat is left searing raw and he huffs _thank goodness_ like a goddamn hero and breaks apart half the city and wraps her up in his arms and _leaps_.

**Thirst—**

Sneakers scuff and scrape against the asphalt, shouts and grunts and there is a swish of a net—Usopp waves his pom-poms as Sanji goes down on one knee before Robin ("_Robin-chwan, does your heart beat faster watching me win the purity of your love?_"), and Zoro hits him with the back of his hand ("_What the hell is wrong with your brain?_"); Chopper proclaims he will be a man and score the next point and Luffy jogs over to Nami, who is keeping track of this chaos, and she tosses him a water bottle before he even opens his mouth—he asks _we're winning, right_ by way of thanks, and she tells him _yes, ten points ahead_ and meaning good luck.

**All—**

It's painfully obvious he doesn't have the brain capacity to even comprehend what this feeling is—so Nami recognizes that no; this won't work out at all.

**Fog—**

The air is heavy and thick like the shadows in the hollows of his neck when Luffy stretches himself on deck with a snap; Franky is at the helm and Usopp is readying the cannons and everything is deadly silent against the soft swish of the ocean that they're treading in—then Luffy yells, "MAN, I'M HUNGRY!" and Nami kicks him in the chest and everyone screams at him: "SHUT UP, FOOL, WE'RE IN ENEMY WATERS! OH—SHIT!" as two ominous eyes glowing through the mist until Luffy whines that he hasn't had meat in ten minutes, draws back his fist, and punches the Sea King right between the eyes, and turns to Nami as it falls unconscious behind them: "There, happy? OOOI, SANJI! MAKE ME FOOD."

**Before—**

"I'm not going to become a pirate," she says, and slaps his outstretched hand, "Rather than partners, let's say we're cooperating!"

**Hurt—**

"Stupid, stupid, _stupid!_" she shrieks at herself and curls her fingers into the burning, spiting mark of Arlong, "Be brave, Nami! Can't you just—," her voice cracks, and she remembers gunshots and dead mothers, and sinks to her knees and tries to thread herself back together again, pulling at the tears in her skin and trying not to think about how much more pain she must go through and—and she hates herself, bitterly, "can't you be brave just this once?"

**Kind—**

On an island on East Blue, the police sheriff stomps around a whitewashed house and rubs his mustache and sits down at the table with a clatter, throws the newspaper down, and says abruptly, "I don't like it. That little kid and Na-chan? I don't like it at all," and Nojiko rests her tattooed arm on her cheek: "Luffy won't break his promise," she looks out the window and over the mikan grove, envisioning the ocean, "He's protecting her dream, so that makes it okay, right, Gen-san?"

**Warm—**

Sometimes, if the street is crowded and they are alone, the back of their hands will brush; Nami might drift a little closer and Luffy might walk a little slower, but neither will say anything… they don't really have to.

**Pattern—**

This is how it goes: Nami is already eating her fruit salad at the table when Luffy stumbles into the kitchen half-asleep; Brooke and Franky come bursting in with their morning melodies, Robin proposes she and Nami should go to town to find out more information about the next island they're heading to (Nami agrees, and mentions some of her shirts are wearing out) as Usopp boasts how he captured two double-finned sharks before breakfast (behind him, Zoro clinks his swords shut and yawns)—the group splits up for the day, and Nami is going around hunting for bargain-priced shoes and she sees Sanji in the market and Chopper in the bookstore and Zoro wandering around an alley, and somehow as sunset is bleeding into the horizon, they all find their way back to Thousand Sunny in time for the finishing touches of dinner, and Nami always finds a seat by Luffy so she can smack him for stealing all their food, and then she'll water her mikan trees and work on her maps and listen to her captain and his band of idiots howl a goodnight song and they'll all go to sleep, sooner or later—until morning greets Nami with a rustle of wind.

**Cycle—**

Luffy tears down the street on a bicycle, side-by-side with a pair of angry, snorting horses that Usopp is desperately trying to rein in; they pass in a blur in front of Nami, who catches a flash red on black ("Damn horses! I'll kick your asses and then eat you!"), a pink hat ("_Ahh somebwone sabe me!_"), a beer bottle, and then yellow ("Ah, Nami-swan!"), before her hair flies over her eyes and she coughs in the dust that billows up after them—"Was… Luffy just… racing against a wagon?" she blankly asks Robin, who seems vaguely concerned: "Perhaps we should save them before they—," there is a resounding crash before Nami hears five bodies hit the ocean; Robin doesn't even blink, "Hm. Never mind."

**Glow—**

It seems that Robin is the only one who notices what's going on between her captain and his navigator— that is, until warm one night where Luffy's sitting on Sunny's swing talking to Nami, who's leaning against the tree, arms linked around her knees, and Robin glances up from her book to the melodious tremors of Brooke's violin coming from atop the foremast and Zoro crosses his arms beside her with a clink of his swords and Franky shuts off all the lights so Chopper and Usopp can release a jar full of fireflies that illuminate the dark ship with tiny, dancing spots of radiance;she has to smile because—those two, they don't even notice.

**Zero—**

"Wake up! Wake up, wake up, _wake up!_" she screams at him, every painful sob tearing against her broken ribs (_zerozerozerozeroonezero_) as she punches his cold, drowned face, drenches her fists in his blood (_zeroonezerozeronezero_) and gasps and yells and pants and finally sucks in air and shoves her lips against his as the battle rages on around them—and Nami pushes life back in.

(_zerozerooneoneone one one one one one_)

**Wonder—**

"Whoa," Luffy breathes out as the sky grows dark mid-afternoon and the blazing sun hanging above is slowly drunk in by the moon; Sanji's cigarette drops from his mouth and fizzes out on the wood, Franky tilts his sunglasses down to get a better look at the sky, and she can hear Robin say, "How splendid!" and Brooke shout, "Yohohoho! I haven't laid my eyes on such a spectacle for fifty years! But then—I don't have any eyes!" as the rest of the crew become speechless for a brief second—Nami braces herself on Sunny's railing and raises her hand against her brow as the solar eclipse spins above them.

**Scold—**

"YOU ARE A STUPID IDIOT WITH A BRAIN THE SIZE OF CHOPPER'S HOOF AND. AND I SHOULD TAKE AWAY YOUR MEAT FOR A WEEK," Nami yells at a nearly unrecognizable Luffy, who is blubbering his protests through angry, puffy lips and massively swollen cheeks; she shouts at him some more, inhales, takes a sip of tea, and walks away, "Okay. I feel better now. Robin, let's go shopping for shoes."

**Figure—**

Nami opens her eyes with a sharp inhale, eyes tracing the darkness, sure she just saw something skitter around the trees; she punches the person nearest to her hard, hissing, "_I think someone's watching us!_" Luffy just grumbles and turns around—she's breathes wide-eyed at the forest canopy for a few more minutes before tugging angrily on his earlobe, and he snaps, "_God, Nami, it's just an bird! Lemme sleep already!_," but he still lets her pull her sleeping bag close to him and press her fists against his back.

**Then—**

"Because," he tells her, "this hat is my treasure."

**Lie—**

Nami lounges in the lawn in her bikini because she needs a proper tan and they aren't anywhere near an island yet; Luffy walks past her obliviously—she yells his name and tosses him a bottle of sunscreen with an order: "Eeh, why me? Ask Sanji to do it, I'm wanna go fishing," he whines, picking his nose; "Sanji-kun is making lemonade for all of us," Nami replies and languidly stretches in the sun like a cat and snaps her fingers until Luffy stalks toward her with the sunscreen, muttering—she figures it's a good step forward.

**Hunt—**

"Sure, you can have him," she says to the pirate empress after a moment's thought, "but I'll need payment, of course," Nami snaps her Clima-Tact in place and smiles cattily, "All of your money should be enough!"

**Mistake—**

"WHO MADE MY NAVIGATOR CRY?"

**Birth—**

It's something like (a casual) "Hey, Nami, is it your birthday today?" and (a surprised) "Yeah, it is. How did you know?" to (some shrugging, some nose-picking, then) "Robin told me. Here, want the rest of my meat?" which results in a raging cook slamming a kick against his captain's head and the beginnings of a general tumult of disorderly chaos so Nami tells them all to shut up (they don't) and has to slap her forehead and whine _did you have to tell him _to Robin, but the crafty woman just smiles and Luffy roars _LET'S THROW A BIRTHDAY PARTY_ and everyone cheers because birthday parties mean cake and beer and food and presents, and also because they all know Nami is very happy, even if she is too embarrassed to show it.

**Cut—**

"Oh look, meat!" the pirate points; Luffy blinks: "Hm? Where?" and it takes that instantaneous moment for their enemy to slash his sword and for Nami to throw herself at Luffy's waist—they crash to the ground, stray strands of orange hair drifting in the wind and wide-blinking eyes and a line of blood trickling down his jaw and onto her shoulder; it takes one more second for rage to kick in: "HEY! THERE WAS NO MEAT!"

**Double—**

"Yes, four sons and four daughters do sound nice," Nami says dreamily, and the Pirate King spits his meat onto Zoro's face.

**Cover—**

He won't be there to protect her in battle, so she doesn't waste a thought on him and attacks with lightning and windstorms, because—because if he can withstand poison and flames and blood, then she can at least refuse to die as well.

**Lick—**

"You can hold her, but you better be careful," Nami warns him, and Luffy nods eagerly before scooping up the ginger tabby in his hands: the little cat squirms, pokes its wet nose at his fingers curiously, and then licks and meows and scratches at the numerous scars lining his palm which send Luffy in a wriggle of confusion ("Oi, oi, Nami! It's biting me!"); his navigator just laughs and leans against his shoulders, rubbing the small tabby behind the ears: "It means she likes you."

**Wheel—**

The first time Luffy steers, he sends Merry straight into the mouth of a Sea King—though annoyed, Nami agrees to brush it off as a coincidence, and thinks no further of it; the second time Luffy steers, he manages to get the sails trapped in a tree, and break apart half the crow's nest—Nami unapologetically lets Zoro and Sanji beat him for that; the third time Luffy steers, he crashes Merry into an iceberg and he, along with part of the mast, fall into the ocean—at the next meeting, Nami enforces the petition of Never Ever On the Pain of Death Let Luffy Steer Again.

**Slight—**

Nami's sandals slap the dirt path of the mikan grove, fresh and ripe in the summer breeze, and she runs through the sweet scent until she reaches a woman—a purple-haired woman that she shows her first completed map to and she is swept from her feet and twirled in the air and there is laughter and Gen-san and Nojiko and, and, and… Nami wakes up slowly, the weak whisper catching between her teeth and fluttering out her lips, and she can hear Luffy and Usopp making a ruckus above her room and Yosaku and Johnny shouting animatedly at Zoro on deck; she presses one arm over her eyes, listening to them yell and scream and laugh, and stays like that for a very long time.

**Fling—**

"I'd bet on you," he says unthinkingly as his scarred, calloused hands ghost over her wrist; she stifles a giggle, because as stupid as that sounds—well, it doesn't actually sound so bad.

**Sorry—**

Nine days after Nami officially joins the crew, she catches Luffy with sticky hands and the smell of mikan, and that's the first time she slaps him straight across the mouth, makes him spit out a tooth, and runs below deck—he comes into her room three minutes later, after being kicked around deck by Sanji, to apologize: and she calmly says she'll forgive him if he becomes her gofer for one month—he brightens ("A gofer? What's it taste like?"), and agrees.

**Call—**

Her voice from the tone dial is quiet: "But take me back."

**Jewel—**

She likes it when he hands her the treasures from their recent explorations—he likes it better when she saves the dirty, stupid-looking armors just for him.

**Fruit—**

He likes the scent of mikan on her skin—she likes it better when she can taste it on his lips.

**House—**

They have made their tracks known across the world: they have roared into a sand kingdom, slipped and stumbled through a land of snow, stormed down a city of water, waged war in a judicial island, battled against a hundred zombies in a never-ending night and laughed with two mighty giants… and every single time, they've returned to their ship—their home.

**Swim—**

"Hey, Nami, I wanna show you something," Luffy says one night as he stumbles into the aquarium bar, and smacks a switch that turns off the lamps—Nami hears herself gasp, because the artificial light inside the aquarium makes the bar turn a hazy blue-green shade and silhouettes of swaying seaweed and flitting silver fins are shadowed against her face, along the walls, on the floor; when Luffy speaks, he is standing beside her: "Isn't this cool? This is how it is, deep in the ocean, right?" and in the darkness, Luffy cups a hand around the silhouette of a fish floating on his palm—"Yes," she answers softly, and everything, everything is bathed in an ethereal, otherworldly dream.

**Family—**

Between the booming blasts in Usopp's Factory, Franky hammering nails on his latest project, the grunt and clank of Zoro and his weights, Robin's book fluttering in the wind, Sanji slicing through Sea King meat, Chopper rifling through his research notes, and Brooke strolling along the rigging, humming Bink's Sake—Nami bends over the railing of the upper deck and confides, "Hey, Luffy, this will last forever, won't it?" and he turns around, frowning, "That's stupid. I don't want to live that long and grow bald. SANJI, WHEN'S LUNCH?" and she hits him over his head ("What was that for?"), asks him if she can borrow his hat (he lets her, because it's really hot and she doesn't want to burn), and Nami goes off strolling, one hand setting Luffy's straw hat comfortably on her head, suddenly feeling very satisfied.

**Interest—**

She presses her palm to his chest and can feel his heartbeat quicken just under skin; to have something so precious against her fingertips is much more captivating than it should be.

**Record—**

Nami kisses Luffy first; it takes roughly half a year for her to finally admit that no, it wasn't some vivid illusion she planted in his head, and another two seconds for him to understand before he kisses her back.

**Glass—**

"No, I don't! I don't love you!" Nami snaps angrily, and jerks her body around; he pushes his face in front of her and asks unblinking, "Ok, so, what aren't you telling me?" like she's as transparent as glass and Nami shakes her head until he leans back, gives her room, and she tells her hands very softly, "I don't love you at all—but I'm close to it."

**Shape—**

"Hey," he murmurs lowly and draws her in, measuring the width of her waist with his hands and sliding his palm down her hourglass figure as she calculates the expanse of his chest that she curves into, orange hair tickling eyelashes, wet mouths, soft pants—the room is a dark and sultry place, scarlet covers slither over white ankles and tan shoulders; Luffy buries his face in the crook of her neck and grips her tighter: "It's okay," Nami whispers, and brushes her fingers against the curves of his cheek, "I'm here."

**Live—**

They know Grand Line is an unpredictable place: they understand that maybe he will die today and never get to ask her to be his Queen; they understand that maybe she will get lost in a storm tomorrow and their paths will never cross again—but right now the sea is endless and free and the sky is warm, and right now they are together… so that little is big enough.


End file.
